


Metamorphosis

by garbagecan_not_garbagecannot



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 15:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20260297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garbagecan_not_garbagecannot/pseuds/garbagecan_not_garbagecannot
Summary: Dante was born a twin. From his birth there was another person in the world who shared his face, his body, his hair, his eyes... He was born a twin with an identical older brother, their only physical differences lay in their choice of dress and hairstyle.And then his brother goes away, and everything changes.





	Metamorphosis

Dante was born a twin. From his birth there was another person in the world who shared his face, his body, his hair, his eyes... He was born a twin with an identical older brother, their only physical differences lay in their choice of dress and hairstyle.

In some ways, Dante found it comfortable, grounding, that there was another person in the world who was just like him. A half-breed, someone who in so many ways carries the burden of Sparda's legacy on his shoulder, and someone else who knows the weight his mother's blood, who can feel it in the amulet halves given to them. Her most powerful gift to them, if not the most valuable—that would be her love.

Losing Vergil was a blow, and the knowledge that his brother's blood rested on his own hands made the loss nearly unbearable. He'd lost him before, of course, in the ruins of what was once their home, the night their mother died. But that time... That time he hadn't known for sure. He hadn't _known_ that Vergil was dead, he only knew that he was gone. The second time was the same, the time Vergil _left_.

He wasn't dead, then, he was simply... Gone. He'd simply chosen to leave Dante behind, throw himself into the underworld like the world's greatest moron.

But he'd left still alive.

And Dante was still a twin. Still had a brother.

No matter how separated the two of them were.

It's hard to live after he realises that he's killed his own brother. It doesn't matter that he'd allowed himself to become corrupted by Mundus, it doesn't _matter_ that he'd looked like little more than a cracking corpse the last time Dante saw him... It was still so unbearably hard to carry the knowledge that Dante himself was the cause for his brother's death.

It may have been kill or be killed, but the guilt eats away at him anyway.

So he treks through life with it, accepts that he is no longer a twin, that there are no longer two sons of Sparda, there is only the one. He carries the weight of his father's legacy alone. He is the only person alive who knows the weight of his mother's blood.

He is the only person in the world with the face he sees every time he looks into a mirror.

The years pass, and the ache gets smaller. It never fully leaves, but Dante learns to live with it. It's not overpowering anymore, he doesn't need to drown it in as much alcohol as he can anymore. He has friends, he has a _life_.

Finding Nero is a bit of a gut punch. He doesn't think too much of it at first, just some mild curiosity at the possibilities of what, or who, he could be. But as soon as Dante saw the reaction Yamato had to the boy—the kind of reaction she would only have to a blood relative of Vergil's—he realised the truth of it.

Just another part of his brother's life that Dante was never privy to.

He leaves Yamato with the kid. Better for it to remain with someone who will use her power for humanity, rather than to allow her to collect dust somewhere dark where Dante doesn't have to look at her and _remember_.

Years continue to pass, Dante continues to rack up years alone, years without a twin, without a brother. Years of knowing that Vergil is dead because Dante killed him.

And then the Qliphoth tree takes root and starts to grows in the middle of Red Grave city, and fucking everything just starts to go to shit entirely.

Fucking _Vergil_ who is somehow not dead and somehow more powerful than ever—Vergil who is too much for Dante to handle, and he can barely remember when that last happened. The last true struggle... Mundus. And before that, Vergil again. Not that he's told anyone what V told him during that first meeting. He hasn't... He hadn't really believed it at first.

Not that he's about to say that to V.

Vergil certainly doesn't _look_ much like himself, but there's just a hint, just a taste, of a familiar aura around him. And suddenly Dante wants to kill his brother all over again for this mess.

So many years of letting Dante think he was dead, _killed_ by Dante himself, only for him to come back with the same kind of murderous nonsense as he did the last time he waltzed back into Dante's life with Temen-Ni-Gru.

Nero makes it out, and that's about as much as Dante can hope for, all things considered.

And then everything turns black as pain explodes through his body anew.

When he finally returns to his senses again, he realises how much time he's lost. Vergil is growing stronger, getting closer to his goal, and Dante can't let him succeed. They always seem to be fighting against each other, always antagonistic.... Dante wishes it were different, but only Vergil would have the power to change things between them.

After all, it's never mattered that Dante loves his brother and just wants him _back_, just wants him to be around.

Vergil has always run away, has always left Dante behind. And as long as Vergil runs towards disasters like this, as long as he brings them into the world, Dante will have to keep chasing to put an end to it.

In the end, Vergil eats the Qliphoth fruit, Dante was too slow to stop him from doing it. But Dante has absorbed the sword Sparda and their battle ends in Dante's favour after all.

Of course, he doesn't realise the error of letting V end it all until just before V and Vergil's "Urizen" form finally merge back into Vergil, Dante's brother finally remade.

He stares at that familiar back, how many times has he seen it before as it walked away from him?

With a pang, Dante realises that his brother really is back. Suddenly, now, it's startlingly clear that there's one more person in the world who shares his blood, his burden as a Son of Sparda, the weight of his mother's blood, and...

Vergil turns around and chokes off the train of thought into a pathetic hurt whimper.

The face that greets him is not the face he sees in the mirror every day.

There is no other person in the world who shares his face. Not anymore.

Last time Dante saw Vergil, _truly_ saw Vergil, they were still identical. Their faces the same, indistinguishable.

There's a part of Dante that is yelling about nature versus nurture, yelling about how they've lived such different lives, of course they would start to look different. But it still feels like their faces are _too_ different, as if they've never been identical, as if they've never been twins at all. 

It still feels like a betrayal.

With a snarl of his brother's name, he buries the feelings down deep. After all, what's one more reminder of the time they've lost? What's one more betrayal in the scope of things?

In the end, he's so torn up, so out of sorts from all of it, that he loses his head and Vergil escapes.

And as always, Dante will have to chase after his dumb ass.

Hopefully he'll at least be able to spare Nero the pain of going up against him, of having to face the idea of killing his own kin. It's a burden Dante has carried enough times, he can carry it again if he has to.

But at least Nero can be spared.

Of course, in the end, things don't turn out that way. Dante and Vergil were fully committed to killing each other, as they've always been, but Nero gets in the way.

Dante won't fight him. Can't.

Killing his brother is one thing, he's done it enough times to be prepared for ripping his own heart out that way. Harming Nero... That would be a new form of pain entirely, and Dante's not going to face it. He refuses to.

Nero defeats Vergil in the end. Dante has no idea if it's because Vergil's exhausted and not at his best or because he deliberately took it easy on the kid because he, like Dante, cannot bear to actually harm him.

Perhaps this boy Vergil's known for all of ten minutes is worth more to him than Dante ever has been.

That would just be Dante's luck, wouldn't it? His brother will never care for him, not beyond the concept of defeating him in battle. And yet Dante has chased him since childhood in desperate hope that maybe he'll _finally_ be worth something to his brother.

But it seems that fate is not that kind, and Dante will just have to accept the truth. Vergil will never care for him, and the son he didn't know he had is worth care and respect after about ten minutes, something Dante has never been afforded.

He can't begrudge Nero more tender emotions from his father—however limited they may be—but it still stings like a bullet through the brain.

Still, he knows that there's nothing else to be done. The Qliphoth needs to be cut down, the portal closed... Vergil needs to be given incentive to play nice.

If Dante needs to sacrifice himself to keep Vergil busy, then he will.

No matter how painful it is.

Time passes slowly in the underworld, or at least it feels like it does to Dante.

He's closer to his brother than he's been since they were eight years old. Their battles are now just for the upper hand, not to the death. And the only danger, if it can even be called that, is when other demons attack them while they're taking a break—or even in the middle of a fight.

As much fun it is on occasion, as much as it helps him almost forget the fact that his brother's face is _wrong_, as much as it helps him keep his mind off all the time they've lost... He grows weary of it. They don't really talk, no more than they ever have, and Dante can feel the ghost of all things unsaid between them nearly choke him some days when he wakes.

Well, "day" is giving the underworld credit. All in all it hardly seems to operate on a day-night cycle. Instead some areas are permanently illuminated, some permanently in darkness, and some in half-shade. Instead they just have to go look for dark crevices if they feel like taking a nap, rather than wait for it to actually turn dark wherever they are.

Vergil shows no signs of tiring of this existence, but Dante finds himself less and less enthused with every passing second. He wonders how much longer he can stand the play-acting.

He misses the human world with all it's neat little things. He misses eating rather than just feeding on demon essence to keep his vitality up. He misses hanging out with Lady and Trish. He'd even let them go off on one of their little rants about what a mess he is without complaint at this point.

He misses making fun of Nero, and he has to stop the smile that wants to spread on his lips at the memory of how affronted the kid can get.

... He'll take good care of the world while Dante's gone, he and the girls.

He's not especially amazed by the underworld, never has been. He understands completely why more or less all demons want to leave it.

The smaller weaker kinds can easily slip through the cracks that exist between this world and the human one. But demons like Dante, like Vergil, like Mundus... They're too powerful to slip through the cracks.

Either they need to use a power source to punch through in a place where the separation in thinner—like Mundus planned with Dante on Mallet Island—or... Well, or they need Yamato.

Which means Dante is stuck here until his brother feels like leaving. Unless he decides to try and steal Yamato from him and attempt to get out on his own.

But Dante's not gonna do that.

He's never been the one to leave Vergil behind, it's always been the other way around.

Who knows? Maybe Vergil will escape to the human world without him when he gets bored of the fighting. Dante wouldn't be surprised, he's been burned too many times to have much hope in Vergil feeling anything positive towards him.

As the months continue to pass, Dante notices that Vergil's appearance is changing. His face is... changing. To what, Dante doesn't know. But seeing it in his brother makes him afraid of looking at his own reflection. He's not sure what he'll see.

Perhaps the underworld has that kind of effect on you.

"I want to leave," Vergil says suddenly, one day.

Dante stares at him him blankly. This is the first time Vergil has expressed such a sentiment, or even the smallest hint of it.

"Oookaay..." Dante squints at him. "Where do you want to go, then?"

"Back to the human world. Between the two of us and Yamato it shouldn't be a problem. All we need to do is find somewhere with a thinner divide."

Dante remains silent for a while, shocked to his core at the idea that Vergil is planning to bring him along. They he's not just leaving as he's always done before.

"Well... Here's hoping we don't end up at Mallet Island," is all he manages to choke out, struggling to keep his voice level.

Vergil makes a face. "Well, we must go looking then."

Dante nods, and as the head out, he suddenly catches sight of their reflections. He stares at them and only barely manages to keep walking instead of coming to a dead stop at the sight.

Their faces... They're... More similar than they were before.

It's as if spending time together is slowly making them grow more similar again.

Dante chokes down the small glimmer of hope that springs up in his chest.

Perhaps one day he'll no longer be the only person in the world with his face. Perhaps one day they'l come back around to where they started.

Identical twins, almost impossible to tell apart from appearance alone.

Perhaps one day they'll be proper brothers again.


End file.
